Known as the Kingdom of Mysore until this princely state was absorbed into the Union of India on August 15, 1947 and restyled the State of Mysore in 1948. A nationwide movement to bind Indian states by shared language culminated into the States Reorganization Act of November 1, 1956. The Act reconstituted Mysore State into a linguistically homogeneous Kannada-speaking territory. With the passing of the Mysore State Act in 1973, the state emerged with the new name of 'Karnataka' (derived from kar, "black", and nadu, "country", in Dravidian).
